Perfect
by Freespirit127
Summary: Sometimes the perfect christmas is not what you expect it to be...


**Disclaimer:** Unfortunately, Wayne and Courtney belong to Marvel, Hasbro, DDP etc., and not to me. But I own Katie!

This is for all other BH/CG shippers, especially Danielle, Jenn and Amy. Thanks a bunch to Rach for the beta (and the slap on the wrist).

* * *

**Perfect**

"Soooo..." he said when he was done rearranging the small mountain of gifts under their tree for what seemed like the millionth time. First, he'd arranged them after their sizes, then after their contents, then after the colors of the wrapping papers. His wife had almost throttled him when he'd thought of sorting them after the number of loops the bows had.

She'd also threatened to kill him when they had spent almost a week and multiple trips to every Christmas tree vendor in town, just to find that one perfect tree. None they had seen was good enough for his taste. They were either to wide, too thin, to tall, too short, had too little or too much twigs or needles, or the tips of the needles were too sharp. It had taken her ten minutes, her whole repertoire of cuss words (he'd never known that she knew so many more of them than he did) and the threat of canceling their entire Christmas plans to make him pick a tree.

Surprisingly, decoration had not been an issue... or not a big one at least. They used the same ornaments they'd used the previous years, some of them given to them by her parents and grandparents, some of them they'd bought together. None of the ornaments came from his family, since they had never had any. When he had been a child, money had been so tight that they couldn't afford a tree. Their only decorations had been stars his mother had cut out of any paper she could find... and their small nativity scene.

His eyes went down to it as he remembered how his father had collected every little piece of wood he could find, small twigs, lolly sticks, a branch torn from a tree during a fall storm. Then, his father had sat down and started the tedious work of cutting the pieces and putting them together. The branch he'd used for the figures. It had not been wide enough for the ox and donkey to have legs, so they were lying down in dried grass. The angel's original wings had been made of bent twigs and feathers. He'd never found out where the feathers had come from. They had only lasted that very Christmas. The next, his father had found another piece of wood to make new wings from.

Carefully, he picked the angel up and looked at it. His father had done a great job. Every figure was perfectly detailed, from their facial features to the folds in their clothes. They looked odd together with the crudely built stable. But to him it was perfect in its own way. He sat the angel back down and got up to finish the rest of the tree decorations. All that was left was to put the star on the top of the tree. With a soft cloth, he polished the star until he could see his face reflected in the surface. Then, very carefully, he sat it on the top and adjusted it a bit. When it sat perfectly, he turned around to the couch.

"Well?" he said to the person sitting there, the person he was trying so hard to make this Christmas perfect for. "What do you think?"

The only reply he received was a dismayed squeal. Smiling, he walked over to the couch and sat down next to the small child sitting in a nest of cushions.

"What's wrong, pumkin?"

The little girl looked at him with her big brown eyes, then tried again to reach for a red bow on the table, again without success.

"You wan' that bow?"

She turned to him, her eyes now slightly shining with tears, her lower lip pushed out slightly as if she were ready to cry. He shook his head and gently lifted into his lap.

"Not even a year old, an' you already know your mama's best trick to make me do what she wants."

He took the bow from the table and held it to the girl. Now squealing happily, she grabbed it and started to examine it.

"I spent hours to make all these decorations perfect just for you, and all you got eyes for is that d... stupid bow."

He wasn't mad. He knew that she was yet too small to understand what he was doing and why. This wasn't any Christmas. It was her first and their first as a family. And her daddy had promised himself that his children would have better holidays than he had as a child. He wanted them to have a beautifully decorated tree and lovingly wrapped gifts that didn't come from welfare and held broken toys. In short, he wanted them to have a perfect Christmas.

"Da!"

The little girl waved the red bow in front of his nose, then pointed to the tree. "Da!"

"You want me to put that on the tree?"

She squealed happily, and her father sighed.

"Okay..." He sat her down in her nest again, taking the proffered red bow and walked to the tree. "Now where to put that bow..."

Carefully he studied the tree and realized there was just one place to put it, right under the crystal star on top. For a moment he fondly watched it sparkling in the lights. Two years ago, shortly before they'd gotten married, his wife had seen it at a market stall in Prague during an undercover mission. Shortly before they'd returned to the States, he had run back and bought it for her. Never in his life would he forget the sparkle in her eyes when he'd given it to her on the plane. It was the same sparkle he had just seen in his baby girl's eyes.

Reaching up, he tied the bow around the base of the star, then picked the girl from the couch to show her his work.

"Better now?"

Happily clapping her little hands, the girl squealed. He regarded her for one second. Then he shifted his gaze to the makeshift nativity set.

For a short moment he thought he saw a little boy dressed in an old sweater and patched pants lying on the floor in front of the set, watching it with a content smile on his face and carefully tracing one of the feathers with his finger.

It was a boy he knew all too well.

Himself, in the year his father made the nativity set. He remembered seeing one in a store window when he came home from church with his mother and asking her what it was. She had tears in her eyes when she told him, knowing they would not be able to afford one. The next day, his father had started to collect the materials and started to build the set. He'd worked hard on it, even into the early morning hours of Christmas, just for his son.

Suddenly, he realized something and looked around his living room. Everything looked like it was the set for a catalogue or home improvement magazine photo shoot.

It looked so ... sterile.

He thought for a second, then turned to couch and put the little girl back into her nest of pillows.

"Stay where you are, I'll be right back."

With that he got back to work and started to rearrange the gifts once again. After that, he tackled the tree. A lot of tinsel found its way into the trash can, and some of the tackier ornaments found their way into their boxes to rest there for a very long time. He was so busy that he never heard his wife come in.

Noticing what he was doing, she tiptoed to the couch and pulled her daughter into her lap. In silence they watched the most important man in their lives as he thinned out the tree decorations.

A few minutes went by, then he stood ramrod straight -as usual-, and glanced at his work critically.

"Hmmm..."

"Looks good from my point of view," his wife said. "Though I can't tell about the tree until you step aside."

Surprised, he turned around. "When did ya learn to sneak up on me?"

"In Basic Sneaking 101 -How to surprise a hardass." She gave him the sassy smile that could drive him nuts sometimes. "Now, would you please move a bit to the left so that our little angel and I can examine the tree?"

"As you wish, ma'am," he said with a mock bow. His wife just stuck out her tongue at him.

Slowly, he walked to the couch and plopped down next to her.

"Didn't it look like that at first?"

"Yeah."

"But you didn't like it... what made you change your mind? Do you have a fever or something?" She reached and placed a hand on his forehead. With a smile, he took and kissed the inside of her palm.

"You could say it was a ghost of Christmas past." Wayne put an arm around Courtney and pulled her closer. "So what do you think?"

"I'd say it's perfect. And you, angel?" She looked down on little Katie, who stared at the tree with wide, shining eyes. "I think she agrees with me."

Wayne smiled. "Me too, Barbiedoll, me too."

If he had been able to see the figure of the angel, he would have noticed a small white feather at its feet and a smile that his father had not crafted on its face.


End file.
